History of the Ottoman Empire - Essay Example

The Ottoman Empire History of the Ottoman Empire The Ottoman Empire existed between 1299 and 1923. It was among the largest Empire to rule around the Mediterranean Sea. It consisted of Anatolia, Middle East, South-Eastern Europe and some part of North Africa. The Ottoman Empire was established in western Anatolia by the Oghuz Turks and ruled by the Osman 1. The empires strategic location made it a gateway between Asia and Europe (Aksan & Goffman, 2007). Back then, the empire was commonly known as the Turkish Empire also turkey, but this should however not be confused to modern day Turkey. During the 16th and 17th centuries, the Ottoman was one of the most powerful political institutions in the world. European powers felt threatened by its stability and progress. The empire lay on 19.9m kilometers square with much of it being indirectly controlled by the central government. In 1453, ottomans captured Constantinople from the byzantine and made it their capital. The state became mighty with Mehmed II as its ruler. During the 16th century under Suleiman I the Empire reached its heyday. During this century, it extended from East Persian Gulf to Northwest Hungary and from South Egypt to North Caucasus (Kristic, 2011). The empire interacted with both the east and the west all through its six century existence. During this time, armed soldiers were sent to support Islamic rulers in Aceh and Kenya, and defend slave and spice trade carried out by the Ottoman’s. In the 17th century, external and internal coastal wars weakened the Ottoman Empire. A succession of sultans who were not as powerful as mehmed II, Suleyman I and Selim I was witnessed. The significance of the empire in other European countries slowly diminished. After the defeat of the Ottomans at the battle of Vienna, it became clear that the empire was not the only superpower in Europe. For the first time in 1699, the Ottoman signed a treaty with the Australian Empire based on equal terms. The empire began forming alliances with other states in times of conflict. But by the 20th century, the empire was so weakened economically, militarily and socially. This led to internal aggressions by the military which rendered powerless the sultans. There emerged a stalemate between the ottomans and the Russians. Having advanced guns and canoes, the Russians made good use of this while the ottoman used their mountainous terrain and their land’s cold climate to their advantage. The Russian forces surrendered following the communist revolution in their nation, and the ottomans had the victory. Mustafa Kemal Pash was sent from Istanbul to take charge of Caucasus army. This army played a significant role in winning the Turkish independence war between 1918 and 1923 which led to the formation of the independent Republic of Turkey from what remained of the fallen Ottoman Empire on October 29th, 1923. Body A recent historical review stated that the Ottoman Empire lived only for war. This review also stated “all the people governing this empire had a military connection, every policeman a janissary and at all mountain pass there were guards. In fact, it was the outbreak of peace that actually brought about war in the empire (Goffman, 2002). Though not all of these serious observations may be false, they do confirm the western assumption of the Ottoman Empire being relentlessly just about war which was an unacceptable among European states. This portrayal did not only apply to the Ottoman Empire but to all states in early modern Europe. However, the question arises about other states such as the French state, the early modern Hernsberg state, the English state: did they also live for war? (Aksan & Goffman, 2007).Did they also not hold onto their faith in their Christian extremists, as were ottoman soldiers in their Islamic extremism? This attitude has been termed as “orientalist” and has made historians consider the Ottoman Empire and other non-western empires as peripheral to the standard of European states and their cultures. Scholars have stressed that the ottomans’ language, ethnicity, religion and organization was different from the European standards. Many people within Europe dreaded the ottoman giant. This attitude was however not fixed, and it never became so rampant. Those who had a firsthand experience of this empire had great respect of it. Philosophers also held esteem for ottoman institutions in their writings from the thoughtful texts they read from the Ottoman travelers (Aksan & Goffman, 2007). The historians’ idea and view of the empire as antithetical and ignoble to the so called refined western standards has blocked the nuances of the ottoman civilization and several common elements between the empire and Europe at large. Viewing Europe from afar Historians describe the incursions of the Turkoman into Balkans and Anatolia as barbarian plundering. Nevertheless these same incursions can be imagined as the foundation of a liberating new empire. Constantinople’s fall to the ottoman is viewed as a tragedy for western civilization. Ottoman’s win against the Balkans is imagined as a suspension of the region’s history and the stagnation of a society in chains of an ungodly conqueror for several years. The empire has been seen for years as Christian’s persecutor and at the same time, a haven for intolerant Christian’s runaways from Europe (Kristic, 2011). This perspective revealed a relationship where the walls that divided Christians in Europe from the Ottoman Islamic empire become a field for rich interactive representation of the two. Although there existed at the ideological level a chasm, an enduring approach at the societal level between Christians and the Islamic views was never there. However, common interest counterbalanced this threatening differences and views. The spiritual division Religion has always been a main feature in the relationship between the Ottoman Empire and Europe at large. On their part, the Ottoman leaders changed the state of their empire from a frontier and nomadic principality into an inheritor of a religious foundation. This move and change in ideology gave the empire its now celebrated resilience, longevity and flexibility unlike other early states which used their religious ideology to legalize and mobilize their people in fighting against Islam (Goffman, 2002). Thus, we can say that religion plaid an important initial role in civilization that marked the beginning of the end of these Islamic empires. The fight against Islam by Christian Europe carried on and was so intense with the latest testimony of this obsession being the crusades that sputtered into the 15th century and whose final victim and target was the Ottoman polity. Meanwhile, the Ottoman Empire emerged as a field of many traditions and cultures, rooted in the “Islamic faith” universal belief. Each monarch had to comply with the laws of this Islamic faith (sharia laws). Every activity, change, innovation and movement had to have a justification in the Islamic doctrines. This structure and livelihood tied to religion did guide the growth of the Ottoman Empire, but at the same time it did limit the direction of its expansion. For instance, early Ottomans did justify bloodshed in the name of faith (Kristic, 2011). This allowed continuous onslaught of those who defied Islamic rules and made it impossible to attack any troublesome Muslim or Islamic state, unless otherwise. However, digging deeper, Christian Europe’s and Muslim Ottoman’s spiritual basis are remarkably the same. They are rooted in the same unitary doctrine. However, this similarity does not depict a harmonious coexistence between the two religions; there is a great and bitter rivalry between them. Which we can actually trace back to the biblical story of Isaac and Ishmael in the bible in which, according to the Quran, Ishmael was the son to be scarifies while in the bible, it is stated that Abraham had to sacrifice his son Isaac. This depicts that, for the Muslims, Ishmael the elder son is the key figure in the story while Christians view Isaac as the central character in the story. However, they both agree on the fact that it is Isaac who becomes the Hebrews patriarch. The Quran does insist though that Ishmael did play a similar role for the Arabs. It is this cycle of arrogance and religious differences that have led scholars to dividing the Islamic Ottoman Empire from Christian Europe. The symbiotic relationship between Europe and the Ottoman Empire Differences and hostilities between European communities and the Ottoman communities did exist. This can clearly be seen in the Kosovo and Varna battles, the siege of Vienna, the assault against Malta and many other aggressions (Goffman, 2002). However, there was some symbiotic relationship and dependence between the two communities. These relationships have however been given little attention by scholars thus little is known about them. However, they can be boldly seen in the economic world in which the Mediterranean basin trade activities served to unite these two communities (Kristic, 2011). From the trade of spices, Europeans could only get from the Ottoman Empire to the trade of much bulkier goods such as cottons, grains and dried fruits. It may however seem as though the Europeans were more interested in sustaining and growing business relations since the Ottoman Empire distributed the goods they desired, but it is actually the Islamic empire that created this interaction avenue by playing a non-Muslim role in this Islamic society so as to allow trade, even though they still asserted a Muslim superiority by imposing a head-tax on non-Muslims. Ironically it is during this integration between the ottomans and Europeans in trade, endemic conflict with other Christian communities that each community learned and assimilated the other’s cultures and techniques (Aksan & Goffman, 2007). These interactions sometimes blurred the difference between Muslims and Christians. The interactions between other European states and the Ottoman Empire went beyond trade and conflicts. The Ottoman Empire succeeded the Byzantine Empire an heir to Rome, ruling over the same people and land Constantine’s roman heirs had ruled thousands of years before and utilizing religion as the source of unity for the vast and diverse population (Goffman, 2002). The Ottomans after succession adapted the Byzantine tax laws and incorporated them into sultan’s laws to complement Islamic laws. The ottoman also embraced Persian and Arab legacies and merged the two with the Byzantine legacies, coming up with a unique system that lasted half a millenium. Ottoman’s legitimacy converged from east, south and north. This new state was considered a part of the European world. Even though most western Europeans disliked its ideologies, the empire could not be easily ignored. The middle city: Istanbul The ottoman Istanbul physical and emotional union into Europe was epitomized by Constantinople. An oceanic barrier existed between Christians and Muslims. The immense walls and Rome’s accessibility to land-based hinterlands and the overseas protected the Christendom in times of danger. It withstood the pagans and Muslim-Arabs onslaught in the fourth and seventh centuries. However, it did succumb to the ruinous Latin onslaught in the thirteenth century (Goffman, 2002). The Byzantium (Rome) walls may have weakened but over and over, the city did withstand the attacks by its assailants. The western Latin Church and Orthodox Church in the east may have grown in an estranged manner, but the relevance of the Byzantium to Christian hoods both physical and symbolically cannot be overemphasized. Even Muhammed imagined it as the pivot of the world. Not only was Constantilope a religious symbol, Constantine had also established his economy on this land which linked two great continents. Its location was strategic to. Its position not only allowed it to control trade between the Mediterranean Sea and black sea and the Balkanes and the Asia Minor, it also exposed it to a vast provisioning area all the way from Crimean peninsula to Egypt. Europe did accommodate the nomads, traded and made treaties with them despite their troublesome nature for quite some time, even though not all parts of Europe accepted them as a fixed political landscape (Rajan & Sauer, 2006). After 1453, there was a general feel that the Byzantine Empire had for a long time exploited the strategic location of Constantilope close to 1000 years. The Ottoman Empire felt the need to do the same. Converging communities Byzantine Constantilope’s fall was a horrifying and a major turning point to most Europeans. This however set free this city from a smothering cycle and inaugurated the union between Christian Europe and the Ottoman’s communities. Hostility however did continue between the two for some time as the Vienna and Malta sieges in the sixteenth century by Suleiman and other aggressions. After 1453, Christian Europe never drew in Islamic merchants. However, the initiative in business shifted to the Ottoman Empire and Ottoman Merchants mostly non-Muslims began venturing in Europe. Most of them were Armenian Christians, Jews and Greek orthodox Christians who took advantage of this trade opportunity across western and southern Europe ports. The business of Armenian middlemen began in Persia and by the 17th century, it had gone further to eastern Asia and northern Europe (Rajan & Sauer, 2006). The Armenian community in the Ottoman Empire was a Christian community that had been granted freedom of religion, internal politics and economic life. This made them move easily within the two religion societies. The Ottoman polity granted these traders protection and anchorage as they went about their risky commercial endeavors. The Armenian brought to the Ottoman Empire knowledge of the vast east and helped bring together the religions of the western world. Their trading network produced a uniform trade pattern all over Europe and the Mediterranean world. A new people emerged from these interactions, the Levantines, who became the communicators between the two commercial zones. The Jews became instrumental in bridging the ideologies that separated Europeans and the ottomans due to their existence in both the ottoman and Christian states. The consequences of the Constantilope’s conquest were crucial in the growth of the trans-Mediterranean commercial activities (Goffman, 2002). First, the resettling policy in Istanbul Jews from the Anatolia and Balkans by the policy of sultan Mehmed II created new groups of Jews: those in German (the Ashkenazic Jews), Romanito (those in Greek) and the Karaite from heterodox. Secondly, the re-conquest of Iberia by Christians and the consequential policy of repression pushed so many Sephardic Jews into Ottomans regions. Thirdly, the Syria-Egypt conquest in 1517-1517 moved the Arab-Jewish community into Ottoman’s hands. These communities had united though not freely by 1550. This union brought together different civilizations of Europe and Middle East to form a new society. Particularly, the Sephardic Jew element played a role in helping adapt Christian-European and Islamic-ottoman administration to each other’s business norms (Gregerson & Juster, 2011). Ottoman subjects reciprocated the act of Jews settling in Venice, London and Amsterdam by settling in Istanbul, Aleppo and Alexandria. The Ottoman Jews utilized well the knowledge gained through exposure to western and southern Europe. They engaged in textile production in ottoman and used Western-European trade techniques in their competition with the western merchants. The Jews too took a share in Ottomans’ economy and held negotiations with the French, Venetian, Dutch and English merchants over customs duty. Jewish brokers and translators stood in for diplomats and foreign merchants in their endeavors in Ottoman town and before ottoman officials. Through their commercial activities mainly in concerts with Armenian Christians, ottoman officials, Turkish Muslims and orthodox Greeks, their relations developed to become cultural ties, building and crossing economical, political and cultural bridges through this. The breakthrough for the Greek orthodox commerce came during the eighteenth century when the co-religionists in Ottoman linked up with the Phanariot of Istanbul to take over seaborne trade within the Mediterranean and to direct the government financial procedures. This created a universal mentality and view of Ottoman Empire as one of the European states. A new face in Europe However, modern historians hardly view the Ottoman Empire as part of Europe. Despite the many changes that took place in the empire, these influences are viewed to have marked decay and did not signal progress (Gregerson & Juster, 2011). This view is reasonable considering how the ottoman’s empire’s relation with the rest of the Christian states in Europe had dramatically changed. The same way Spain, Portugal, Italy and other European states responded to the 17th century crisis so was the response by the ottoman empire. Note that, not at any one instance did the Mediterranean states become a lesser part of the western world; they were never abandoned or forgotten by Europe. During the 17th century Ottoman state sought to recover to its initial days of glory; thus it was reluctant to emulate innovations that were taking place in Europe until the 18th century. This initiative was taken by Ottoman’s subjects in their commercial and social enclaves and dialogs along the frontiers rather than the government (Goffman, 2002). These provincial milieus led to the Jews and Muslims losing their commercial hierarchy as communicators to those who did not depend on the goodwill of the central government in the Ottoman Empire. This transfer of economic control among the subjects weakened the state and its power. The consequential decentralization in its economy and politics was indeed of great advantage to the subjects, and it helped in merging the ottoman’s economy with that of Europe. Conclusion In the early and mid 1400s, one could accurately view the Ottoman Empire as non-European. Even though the two had a lot in common their religious, ideological, political, historical and economic differences were overwhelming (Rajan & Sauer, 2006). However as centuries went by, the Ottoman’s and Europe’s interactions made them learn and borrow a lot from each other despite the ideological differences still being conspicuous. But the Europeans learned to accept the Ottomans. The settlement of the Dutch, Venetian ambassadors and the French in Istanbul became the base of the diplomatic systems in the 15th and 16th century. The Greek Orthodox, the Armenian and the Jewish merchants roamed the Atlantic and Mediterranean seas freely. Islam and Judaism became acknowledged, and the relationship between the two re-evaluated. The differences between the two slowly declined and they now borrowed from each other and resembled each other even more. References Aksan, V. H., & Goffman, D. (2007). The early modern Ottomans: Remapping the Empire. New York: Cambridge University Press. Goffman, D. (2002). The Ottoman empire and early modern Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Gregerson, L., & Juster, S. (2011). Empires of God: Religious encounters in the early modern Atlantic. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Krstić, T. (2011). Contested conversions to Islam: Narratives of religious change in the early modern Ottoman Empire. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Rajan, B., & Sauer, E. (2006). Imperialisms: Historical and Literary Investigations, 1500-1900. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Read More